An approach is presented for flexible management of smart homes, covering both home automation and telecare. The aim is to allow end users to manage their homes without requiring detailed technical knowledge or programming ability. This is achieved at three levels: managing home components and their interactions, stating policies for how the home system should react to events, and defining high...

The conventional wisdom in mainstream development policy circles is that income transfers to the poor, and safety net policies more generally, are at best a short-term palliative and at worst a waste of money. They are not seen as a core element of an effective long-term poverty reduction strategy. These views are starting to be questioned. Firstly, evidence from careful evaluations has pointed...

The United States (U.S.) Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund provides financial support for local school districts, state agencies, and non-governmental agencies to design and implement performance-based compensation systems that reward teachers and leaders who improve student learning. These policies put pressure on data systems and the social systems of supporting organizations t...

October 2006 | Volume 3 | Issue 10 | e393 In 2004 the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (“Global Fund”) awarded program grants to Burma (Myanmar) totaling US$98.4 million over fi ve years— recognizing the severity of Burma’s HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics, and noting that malaria was the leading cause of morbidity and mortality, and the leading killer of children un...

65 The stated objective of NIH’s efforts to enhance peer review is to “Fund the best science, by the best scientists, with the least amount of administrative burden.” In 2007 NIH began a formal review of its peer review system. This led to the development of a number of new policies and procedures, including the introduction in January 2010 of a shortened and restructured grant application. The...

Received Mar 3, 2017 Revised May 5, 2017 Accepted May 20, 2017 The burden of obesity varies with age, ethnicity, socio-economic status and state economies. All new projections should hence accommodate population ageing, and other population changes such as immigration, health-care system reform, or technological advances for disease treatment for a comprehensible assessment of global burden. Th...

Open access is a key aim of research funders, institutions and academics. If sustainable solutions are to be found, we must work together as a whole community, including with publishers. Research funders have shown flexibility and sensitivity to publishers in how they make policies for delivering open access to the work they fund; for their part, publishers must now do their bit by acknowledgin...